


Perchance to An Endless Dream

by Jamie_Moriarty



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e11 The Good Samaritan (No. 106), F/M, It’s Only Red and Liz Now, Lizzington - Freeform, Season 1 Liz, Tom Died in the Pilot, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 08:43:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15748251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jamie_Moriarty/pseuds/Jamie_Moriarty
Summary: At the end of The Good Samaritan Killer, Red comes to visit Liz with vastly different results from canon.





	Perchance to An Endless Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scifi_gk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scifi_gk/gifts).



> Some of the dialogue in this story is taken out of the magnificent Season 1. I make no claim to it, I’m just happy it exists.

Calling your name in the midnight hour **  
** Reaching for you from the endless dream **  
** So many miles between us now **  
** But you are always here with me

(Susie Suh, Robot Koch, _Here with Me_ )

  


Liz’s ears registered the noise and her hand flew to her lower back, where she had taken on the habit of wearing her weapon even when she was in her own home.

“Who’s there?” she called out.

“Lizzy… it’s me.”

She didn’t relax her posture until Red came into view, his appearance slightly more disheveled than his usual and the lack of tie telling. “What are you doing here?”

“How did things go with your case? Congratulations. I'm proud of you.”

She indicated he could sit on the couch and after a second or so of uneasy silence she sat next to him. “Does this mean you're back?”

“I don't know. My house is clean. But yours... is not.”

“What does that mean?”

“The deficit that I found in my organization could not have supplied all the knowledge required for the incursion to take place. That would have been supplied by someone with far greater access.”

“Someone on the inside,” she concluded and frowned at the notion.

He inclined his head in reply. “It would seem so.” He paused for a long sigh that was as hard to place as his inscrutable expression. There were bags under his eyes and the skin of his lids looked bruised. “Therefore, we're back where we began.... Me speaking with you.”

She smiled even as inside she was wondering when it had been the last time he had gotten any sleep. “Well, then. Welcome back. Where have you been, anyway?”

He chuckled but it was skin-deep as his expression darkened. “Out and about.”

“Did you bring me anything?”

He laughed, as she had visibly successfully managed to distract him somewhat. His mirth came across as more genuine this time around. “Yes.”

She got to her feet. “You can tell me all about it over dinner.”

He shot her an incredulous look. “You cooked?”

“No, but I can reheat yesterday’s Chinese take-out,” she replied after a curt scoff.

He left his coat and hat on her hallway hanger and then followed her into the kitchen. She took a few food containers out of the fridge.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked politely while standing in the doorway looking uncertain of his footing in the wake of her unexpected invitation in a manner that was downright adorable.

“Set the table,” she instructed pointing to the overhead cabinets holding the plates and utensils.

She had moo shu pork, prawns with pineapple, three egg rolls and plenty of lo mein. She had apparently finished all of the wonton soup. He handed her two large, cobalt blue plates and she loaded them with a helping of each course so he could then heat them in the microwave. He set the table with only chopsticks for himself but put down a fork for her. They worked in silence until she took out a half-empty bottle of wine from the fridge.

“It’s not Chardonnay,” she defended. “But then this isn’t exactly a gourmet meal, either.”

“You’re the one who profiled that I’m comfortable anywhere. This is fine, Lizzy. Thank you.” He paused and their eyes met. There was something unbearable soft in his gaze. “Where do you keep the glasses?” he asked as he looked away.

She showed him and he put them on the table then poured each one of them a hefty portion of her remaining, chilled Sauvignon Blanc.

“I’m sorry about Luli,” she said gently after they sat down.

His shoulders stiffened and his head snapped up towards her. The corners of his mouth had lowered and there was obvious grief in his eyes, so stormy now they seemed almost inky.

“I know you two were close,” she hastened to add, feeling more than a tad awkward.

“What Luli and I were… it wasn’t what you think, Lizzy.”

“It’s none of my business.”

He seemed to stifle another sigh, a muscle working nervously in his left cheek. He started to toy with the food absently, as he started to speak again, his voice even gruffer than his usual. “Luli has been with me a long time. I’ve helped her with what you could call a personal space issue and she elected to come work for me afterwards.” He stabbed at a noodle with a chopstick. “I don’t make a habit of sleeping with my employees. It leads to complications in legal enterprises. With criminal ones, it’s even worse as you can imagine. Soon enough some will come to see it as means to curry favor or obtain more money or it can be misinterpreted as an obligation. It began by accident, while Dembe was still away, fighting his own good fight in his home country. Luli overhead me scream.” He raised his gaze from his untouched plate. She could get lost in the bottomless abyss of his desperation-ridden eyes. “I don’t sleep much anymore and when I do, I have terrible nightmares. I don’t even know which one I dread the most: the dreams or the sometimes unbearable weight of insomnia.”

Her hand shot across the table in order to cover his. “What did Anslo do to you?”

His eye-lids fluttered, his fingers tense and unmoved beneath hers. He said nothing. So she stroked the pad of her thumb over the warm skin of his lower wrist. He let the chopsticks drop to the plate. The noise they made as they hit the porcelain was impossibly loud in her too quiet kitchen, where only the rasp of their breathing kept them company. Gradually his hand began to relax and he turned it with its palm upwards, his fingers caressing uncertainly at her skin. She rubbed a few tips on his palm and he finally looked at her face again. Their fingers pursued their weak caresses further until they met and meshed. She squeezed his hand in reassurance.

“Did you see a doctor?”

He shrugged a single shoulder. “I didn’t have to. Anslo… he gave me a drug that enhanced the impulses in my brain to garner an effect opposite to that of anesthesia. What he did next was unpleasant but by no means the worst I’ve ever experienced.”

A shudder ran through her, a cold frisson of horror. She grasped his hand harder.

“It’s quite alright, Lizzy,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” she uttered fiercely. “You were tortured for me. Because you came out of the cage for me.”

His smile was wan and strange. “I also wanted to come out of the cage for Dembe. I would’ve come out for Luli too, if Anslo had been kind enough to give me time but he wanted to kill her as a warning.” He paused to clear his throat. “It’s not your fault, Lizzy.”

“It’s not yours, either…. For Luli!”

His eyes were burning as he stared at her with an intensity that rattled her to the bone. “I should’ve protected her!”

“This might be hard for you to hear but even you, you’re not omnipotent. What happened with Garrick proves it.”

His upper lip whorled up and into a menacing snarl. She understood then that her words had fallen on deaf ears. At least for tonight.

“We should eat. Food’s getting cold.”

He nodded without saying anything else. He stroked the back of her hand one more time before letting go. They ate very little. Liz’s meal tasted like ashes in her mouth. They drank all of the wine, though.

“You should stay the night,” she found herself murmuring, as he was doing the dishes per his insistence. His back went rigid instantly. “Just to sleep. Like you did with Luli,” she clarified, her voice coming out a little louder.

He turned very slowly. Very deliberately too. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” she answered in earnest.

“I can take the couch in your living room.”

She waved him off. “Somehow I’m not worried about my virtue around you.”

He chuckled once more, the sound lush like indulgent Belgian truffles. “You’re the first woman to ever say that to me.”

She was grateful for the sudden reprieve. “You’re not that irresistible.”

“Lizzy, you wound me.”

“If you’re sore, I’ve some Ibuprofen in my medicine cabinet for later when at least some of the wine clears out of your system. I’ll go shower now.” She stopped, gave the floor a brief once-over before facing him again. “I sleep in the guest bedroom.”

His paling lips twitched but he said nothing, regarding her with a mixture of compassion and determination that accurately matched what she felt for him that evening. The unspoken things between them, about Tom and his betrayal and the scars it left on her psyche, were postponed for another day. One trauma per night sufficed.

“The bathroom’s all yours, after I’m done.” She waited for him to acknowledge it before going on. “And I meant it about the Ibuprofen. It’s the strongest thing I have but it’d work on more than your wounded ego.”

He grimaced exaggeratedly, but his eyes were twinkling. She turned on a heel and left.

  


* * *

He took forever to come to bed. After showering, she had opted to put on a long-sleeved, long-legged flannel pajama she normally never wore. However, it was less revealing than the tank top and boy shorts she usually slept in. That was a line she was far from ready to cross with him. Sitting cross-legged on her bed, she was already beginning to have second thoughts. What was she doing? She was an FBI agent and she had just invited the Concierge of Crime to bed with her. The fact that sex was off the table didn’t make it any less inappropriate. But then who would know? She recalled his face from when he had traded himself to Anslo Garrick in order to save her. He had looked like a man condemned, someone who held no illusions about his fate, but he had never faltered in his choice, nonetheless.

 _I have to admit, Red, I was starting to think you'd never come out of the box. But then her. She was unexpected. Old boy's still got the touch, does he?_ ** _  
_  
** She shook her head at a loss.

“If you’ve changed your mind, I can still sleep on the couch… or leave altogether. As you wish.”

His voice had startled her. He was standing on the threshold, looking doubtful again, clad only in a white undershirt and his black slacks. It was so strange that nothing, no threat, no challenge could faze this strong, dangerous man but the smallest offer of intimacy sent him completely off kilter. Liz drew to her side of the bed and patted the pillow she had pulled out of the closet for him. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I make every effort not to be.”

Liz rolled her eyes. He came to stand by the bed, hesitated then racked his gaze over the side she had left unoccupied. “May I have a blanket?” he asked almost timidly, his eyes fixed on the duvet she used to cover herself.

“Of course.”

When she returned with the blanket, she found him lying stiffly on his back on his assigned pillow. He had taken off his pants and they were now hanging on the back of one chair. Thankfully he still had black boxer shorts on. She covered him the best she could. He lifted his head to get a better look at her then suddenly reached over and snatched her right hand, squeezing the tips of her fingers, his features schooled in something soft and meaningful. He leaned down quickly and pressed a kiss to the back of her hand.

“Thank you, Lizzy” he whispered fervently against her skin, the pet name falling off his lips with a hopeless, reverent kind of magnitude. Then let go of her as abruptly as he had grabbed for contact.

For some reason it disturbed her more than anything that had been said and done between them tonight. She switched off the light and found her way to her side by memory alone. She stretched herself next to him, allowing for a sizable distance between them. She closed her eyes, his breathing deafening in such close quarters. She was positive she couldn’t possibly fall asleep. Yet she did because it was a sharp, anguish-filled scream that woke her up. She bolted upwards and felt her way to the bedside lamp. There was rustling of clothing and by the time light brightened up the room, he was already sitting on the edge of the bed, clearly hyperventilating. She spotted the tattoo she had read about in his file on one arm. She tried to touch him but he rapidly darted out of her reach.

“Red….”

He got up and padded to the hallway. A second later she heard him open the bathroom door. She ran a hand through her hair trying to make some sense of the tangled mess of her thoughts. She was fairly certain she had heard him scream a name. A woman’s name. One she had never heard associated with him before. She jumped off the bed and went to knock on the bathroom door.

“Red… are you okay in there? Red!” She stopped, considered the heft of it for a couple of instants then decided to go for it. After all, she didn’t have to repeat it in the morning. “Raymond.”

That got a reaction. She heard movement on the other side then he finally pried the door apart. “I’m alright, Lizzy. You needn’t worry.”

He looked the opposite of alright, more haggard even than when they had gone to sleep.

“Do you want some Ibuprofen?”

He shook his head no, gaping at her weirdly.

“Who’s she?”

His expression clouded and he didn’t respond.

“You cried out a name in your sleep. A foreign one, I think. Whose is it?”

His eyes locked with hers. He didn’t answer at first. After a while, when she very nearly lost hope that he ever would, he did tell her. He said only one word. One that would forever alter their relationship from then on.

“Yours!”

  


THE END

 


End file.
